We are a student-founded organization in San Diego County working on one problem from two directions.
We teach students what fear of outsiders looks like and where it comes from, and we give adults who are new to English somewhere unhurried to practice speaking it. We believe those two things belong to the same job: making a place where nobody stays a stranger for long.
Two high school founders, a growing group of trained student volunteers, and adult volunteers who serve as conversation partners. Everyone who presents in a classroom or sits down with a learner has been through our training first.
Meet the teamThis started as a conversation about the way people talk about newcomers in San Diego — in classrooms, at work, and at kitchen tables. We decided to stop being annoyed about it and build something instead.
Read our storyTwo programs, one goal: fewer people treated as outsiders in the county we live in. We do that with lessons in schools and free English conversation practice for adults.
See the programsWe kept noticing the same thing in two different places.
At school, we heard the way students talked about classmates who had arrived recently — usually not cruelly, usually just carelessly, and almost always without anyone stopping to correct it. Nobody had ever taught them what that carelessness does or where it comes from. It wasn't in a unit anywhere.
Outside school, we saw adults in our own families and neighborhoods who understood far more English than they felt safe speaking. They had the words. What they didn't have was a low-stakes hour with someone patient enough to wait through a sentence.
Those two problems turned out to be the same problem, seen from opposite ends. So we built one organization to work on both: lessons for young people about where fear of outsiders comes from, and regular conversation practice for adults who want to speak more English.
We are early. We are building partnerships with schools and with businesses across San Diego County, training volunteers, and running sessions. We would rather tell you plainly what we have built so far than decorate this page with numbers we can't stand behind.
If you want to know exactly where things stand before you partner with us, ask us. We will tell you.
When we started talking about this, the thing we kept coming back to was how ordinary the problem is. Nobody in our school set out to make a new classmate feel like an outsider. It happened in small ways, in the space where nobody had taught anyone better.
We think that space is fillable. A single class period changes how a twelve-year-old hears a joke. A standing Tuesday hour changes how someone feels about answering the phone at work.
If you run a classroom, a business, or an hour of free time each week, there is a version of this you can help with. We would like to hear from you.
No jargon, in our lessons or on this site. If a sentence needs a glossary, it needs rewriting.
The people we work with are neighbors and partners. We don't speak for anyone, and we don't tell anyone's story without their permission.
Lessons that shame a classroom don't change anything. We name what xenophobia is and where it comes from, and we trust students to do the thinking.
A conversation partner who comes every week matters more than a big event once a year. Consistency is most of the program.
We do not ask anyone about their immigration status — not on a form, not in a room, not ever. It has nothing to do with practicing English.
We are a young organization run by students. We say so, and we only promise what we can deliver.
We are building partnerships with schools, libraries, and employers across the county. If you are considering working with us and want to talk to someone before you commit to anything, write to us.
Co-founder — classroom education
Write two or three sentences here: what this person does for the organization, and one thing that makes them a person rather than a title.
Co-founder — conversation partners
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Want to be part of it?
See the ways to get involved